Search This Blog

Sunday, 20 November 2016

The Dutch social-democrat politician Frans Timmermans, the
eloquent and multilingual ‘First Vice President of the European Commission’ and
the European Commissioner
for ‘Better Regulation, Inter-Institutional Relations, Rule of Law and Charter
of Fundamental Rights’ is an intelligent man and a thoroughbred politician with
many years of experience in The Netherlands and Europe. He has always been a
diplomatic powerhouse, with many, many skills and an excellent understanding of
English, French and German, but also f.i. the Russian language.

On the other hand, Frans Timmermans is also a very vain and
inconsiderate man, who seemingly does anything to remain in the spotlights. And
during the last two years it seems that he overplayed his diplomatic hand on a
number of high-brow occassions. In fact: on so many occasions and in such
serious matters, that I start to wonder whether a certain part of American criminal
law should not apply to him, in his current career?

Timmermans started his “series of shame” with a statement in
his speech before the Security Council of the United Nations, in the aftermath of
the brutal
attack upon the MH17 airplane in Ukraine.

In this speech, Timmermans openly speculated in a pathetic
way, full of claptrap and unproven assumptions, that some of the victims had
been alive and fully conscious in the moments between the deadly strike with a
BUK surface-to-air missile and their impact on earth:

“How horrible must
have been the final moments of their lives, when they knew the plane was going
down. Did they lock hands with their loved ones, did they hold their children
close to their hearts, did they look each other in the eyes, one final time, in
an unarticulated goodbye? We will never know”.

Later Timmermans admitted in a talkshow, broadcasted on
Dutch national television, that he based this highly speculatory and
sensationalist part of his UNSC speech upon
the fact “that one of the Australian victims had been found with anoxygen mask upon his mouth”.
This particular circumstance was not only unproven – thus speculative – and
factually wrong, but it also came as a shock to the relatives of the Dutch
passengers, who were not informed of this news before.

The official
report by the Dutch Safety Board, created after the MH17 attack, does
claim that the oxygen masks of the airplane had indeed been deployed – probably
after the air pressure had dropped dramatically due to the large holes created
by the rocket shrapnel in the fusillage – and one of the oxygen masks had been
found ‘strapped upon the neck and throat of a passenger’. Nevertheless, there
has never been any solid proof that this particular passenger had indeed consciously
used the oxygen mask during his last moments and still lived through his deadly
drop to earth. The official report:

During the victim
identification process in The Netherlands, one passenger was found with an
emergency oxygen mask [...]. The strap was around the passengers neck and the
mask was around the throat. No information was available about how this
passenger was found at the wreckage site. The NFI examined the mask for
biological traces and performed DNA tests. No DNA profiles could be obtained
from the five samples taken. Therefore DNA analysis was not possible. The lack
of DNA material can be explained by the mask having been left outside for a
long time at high temperatures.

There were no usable
fingerprints found on the mask. The high temperatures may have caused the
quality of fingerprints on the mask to deteriorate.

This circumstance made that the part of Timmermans’ speech about
“loved ones saying farewell to each other during their final moments” seemed
rather “a figment of his imagination” than a just statement based upon sound
investigations. Very human and fully understandable, but deadly for the credibility
of this seasoned and professional political official, in such an explosive and
potentially hazardous investigation.

Strike One!

In January
of this year 2016, Eurocommissioner Timmermans stated out of the blue that
“Roughly sixty percent of the refugees entering the EU could be considered
economic refugees” – or in a popular expression among populists: “Fortune
seekers”:

Frans Timmermans, who
is the commission’s first vice president, told the broadcaster in an interview:
‘More than half of the people now coming to Europe come from countries where
you can assume they have no reason whatsoever to ask for refugee status. More
than half, 60%.’ In the main they are people from Morocco and Tunisia who want
to travel to Europe via Turkey, NOS quoted him as saying. Timmermans bases his
claim on the latest figures from European border agency Frontex which have not
yet been officially published.

I – and with me some other people – made minced meat of this
quite populist statement by Frans Timmermans, based on the same Frontex data,
that Timmermans said to have quoted:

Using this available
data of Frontex over 2015, I made a calculation based upon the mentioned
countries in the Frontex data. In this calculation, next to Syria, Iraq and
Eritrea as obvious war-struck countries, I also reckoned Nigeria and
Afghanistan to be zones of war / massive public unrest. This, due to the
extremely unstable situation in these countries with respectively Boko Haram
and the Taliban planning and executing massive, bloody attacks on civillians.
Therefore I consider people fleeing these countries as refugees of war and not
as economic refugees.

In Q1 of 2015 24,000
of the 62,000 refugees came from countries that I consider as war-zones, or
39%. In other words: 61% of refugees can be considered economic refugees, which
is in line with Timmermans’ statement.

However, in Q2 of
2015, more than 116,000 of the 170,000 refugees (or 68%) were refugees of war
zones, of a total number of refugees that was three times as high as in Q1. In
Q2 Timmermans’ statement was obviously not true.

And in Q3 of 2015 a
staggering 450,000 of 617,000 (!) refugees were refugees of war zones, or 73%.
Only 27% can be considered as economic refugees. This sheds a very unfavourable
light on Timmermans’ statement.

Russia Today, the
Russian international TV-station, claimed that 1 in 3 of Syrian refugees had in
fact a fake Syrian passport and came in reality from another country.

Although I show this
fact from the point of transparency, I personally doubt whether this can be
true at all. This would mean that in Q3 alone more than 100,000 people would
have obtained a fake Syrian passport (“just consider the sheer numbers of fake
Syrian passports being around” – EL) in order to cross the European borders as
fake Syrians. And it would mean that the falsifications would be so perfect
that the Frontex officers would not be able to recognize those, which again
seems very implausible.

However, even when
this Russia Today news would be true indeed, the number of war refugees for Q3
would still be around 56%, which is still much, much higher than the 40% that
Frans Timmermans claimed.

Again Frans Timmermans had been caught in making a statement
full of claptrap and unsound data, obviously trying to put himself back in the
spotlights again, for seemingly no other reason than boosting his own visibility
and ego.

Strike Two!

The latest episode in this unfortunate series about the
First Vice President of the European Commission came last Tuesday (November 15,
2016), when Frans Timmermans stated that “there
were more and more indications that the Turkish religious leader Fettulah Gülen
was indeed involved in the
coup d’etat against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of July, 2016”.

According to Timmermans’ initial statement, he had based
this accusation upon the results of investigations coming from the American
intelligence community, even though a number of American institutions, when
asked, denied this fact. Later, Timmermans diluted his initial statement, by
telling he had received some signals, without disclosing who or which was the
source of these ‘signals’. The Dutch newspaper Tubantia said this about
Timmermans’ statement:

In an interview with
the Flemish weekly magazine ‘Knack’, European Commissioner Frans Timmermans
states to see ‘more and more indications’ for the actual involvement of the
Gülen movement with the coup d’etat [against Turkish president Erdoğan] in
Turkey, happening in July 2016. He is referring to ‘American research’.
However, in the United States nobody knows what Eurocommissioner Timmermans is
talking about. His statement provokes many surprised reactions among European
officials.

The spokeswoman of the European ‘Secretary of State’ Federoca
Mogherini is “absolutely not amused” and the [Dutch] Second Chamber of
Parliament asks upon which information this statement by Timmermans is based.
When asked by Tubantia, the spokeswoman of Timmermans reacts on his behalf: “Timmermans
was just speaking about indications which he saw and heard in the numerous diplomatic
contacts that he has. Nothing more and nothing less”. Further she refused to
comment.

Again Eurocommissioner Frans Timmermans seems to be lured – by
his vanity and his deep-felt desire to stand in the spotlights – into making a
statement, which he would better keep to himself, until he can present it, accompanied
by sound evidence. By doing so once again, he did not only make unfounded
accusations against the Gülen movement, seemingly based on hearsay and
speculation, but he might put large groups of people inside and outside Turkey
in jeopardy. Tubantia quotes a pundit with respect to Turkey, Joost Lagendijk:

Joost Lagendijk thinks
that Timmermans’ statements are straightaway dangerous: “This is a highly
sensitive subject. When you make such bold statements, based upon research that
you allegedly know and the rest of the world doesn’t, this does not seem very
sensible. I am surprised that someone in his position puts a spark in the
powder keg like this”.

And Elsevier,
a Dutch weekly magazine, states with respect to this event:

The Second Chamber
reacts very surprised. “Why would Timmermans put the heat on in Turkey without
any form of proof and in the middle of what seems to be a witch hunt”,
according to D66 MP Sjoerd Sjoerdsma on Twitter. Also MP Joël Voordewind of the
ChristenUnie states that Timmermans should supply sound proof when he makes
such statements. Chief editor Mehmet Cerit of Zaman reacts outraged: “Timmermans
does not understand how harmful his statements can be. Now that things are
easing up a little, he is putting out the fire with gasoline”. According to him
‘idiots’ can find affirmation and motivation in the statements of the First Vice
President of the European Commision, to threaten, suppress or exclude others.

The painful truth is that Timmermans is again ‘caught with his
pants down’, not learning any of the valuable lessons from the earlier mishaps that
he made during the last two years.

Again Timmermans made a statement – seemingly out of vanity and
an urge for public attention – that is either wrong and even untrue or ( at best
) based upon information that is not (yet) evidence-based and should not be
shared with the general public until it is, as it can harm innocent people.

And again Frans Timmermans should have known better than
doing so.

Strike Three!

In 28 states in the United States of America, there is some
kind of the so-called Three Strikes Law.

This lawssubscribes
that habitual offenders of serious, but not lethal crimes, after being caught
three times, should get a much harsher punishment than the crime itself should render
under normal circumstances. In this way, these states want to protect society
against such habitual offenders.

Although I am adamantly against such harsh regulation in
criminal law and I am a strong advocate of reintegration and resocialization of
ex-convicts, at the same time I am haunted by a sneaky suspicion that this will
not be Frans Timmermans’ last mishap in the international diplomatic traffic,
if nothing dramatically changes in his conduct.

It seems to these eyes that Timmermans’ ego is basically standing
in the way of the required execution of his job. A job that should be in the
interest of the whole EU and all of its citizens and should not act as a
billboard for his personality and personal fame.

Therefore I would like to ask: ‘Should it be “Three strikes, you’re out” for the First Vice President
of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans?’. Well, should it?!

Afterward, the Dutch media licked their wounds and wondered
“what the hell” went wrong and how they could have missed this successful grasp
for power by someone, who they thought to be little more than a narcissistic
windbag and a rude, discriminatory and extremely offensive populist with a big mouth and a very bad
taste for everything.

As a matter of fact, most European media – as well as a lot
of American media from Democratic strongholds, like New York, Washington and Los
Angeles – missed the ‘cue’ and looked at
the unfolding events in sheer amazement and cluelessness, like a rabbit looks in the headlights of a car: frozen and unable to respond.

One of the very few people, who predicted the outcome of these
elections right, was Michael Moore, the stubborn, humouristic and ever-teasing filmmaker with the
obstinate opinions and the flawless feel for the “zeitgeist” in his country. He
did so in a “must-read” article that dealt with the seeds of Trump’s success
in the American society. Most others missed the boat! It seemed that the Dutch, European AND American press had forgotten
the dear lesson that the following slogan brings: “if you only look in
the wrong direction, you might miss the train that hits you!”.

An
intelligent explanation for this professional blindness of – at least – the Dutch media for the unstoppable rise of Donald Trump, was printed in the Dutch newspaper Volkskrantin an Op-Ed by Thom Schelstraete,
Student at Journalism:

Why the Dutch news
consumer received a totally distorted image of the election contest, seems
quite simple to me: journalists, correspondents and opinion makers don’t get in
touch with those 59,692,978
republican voters often enough. Check only the map that the website “De
Buitenlandredactie” (i.e. the
foreign editors) published, upon the whereabouts of the Dutch America- correspondents.

The locations of all the Dutch America-correspondents in the United States.Picture courtesy of www.debuitenlandredactie.nlClick to enlarge

Of the twenty-odd
Dutch correspondents in the United States, the far majority lives in New York; four others live in Washington D.C. and a couple live in California. These are
all states and cities that have voted Democratic for decades. Normally there is no
correspondent in a traditionally republican state or a swing state whatsoever to assess the situation and the moods of the people living there.

That sums it up quite accurately.

It is the same as trying to understand the Dutch culture, by
only visiting Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague and forgetting to ask for the general
opinion in rural towns like Staphorst, Hengelo, Roermond and Vlissingen.

The aforementioned Dutch towns and cities and their American counterparts are the places where people think
radically different than in the mondaine and modern cities where most
correspondents reside, irrespective of the fact whether they are in The
Netherlands or the United States.

And now...?! Now is Trump president and Europe has to deal
with it!

I am clueless about how Donald Trump will develop in the
coming four years:

Will Trump turn
into the Ronald Reagan of the 21st Century? A president who seemed initially very
dangerous for peace and stability in the world, as well as for the environment,
but who eventually helped to end the Cold War by developing good relations with
Michail Gorbachev;

Or will Trump, after speaking those soothing words
immediately after his election, still turn into the narcissistic and egocentric
monster that so many people see in him. A president, who plays every dirty
trick in the book, in order to gain absolute power and who will abuse this
unlimited power for his own wealth, status and influence alone? Perhaps a
president, who will bring the world in a devastating war with... whoever?!

Suffice it to say that I almost can’t believe that Trump
will sing a radically different tune after his very dirty, aggressive and
nihilistic campaign! And the first signals of his behaviour and political opinions – a few days after the election night and the subsequent day – are indeed not encouraging.

Irrespective of what happens with Donald Trump in the coming years, it seems quite clear indeed that the United States – as founder and watchman of the “Pax Americana” – have supported this ‘American
peace’ for the longest time.

Europe and the NATO cannot automatically count on it that
the United States will always foot the bill and take the main responsibility
for their security and prosperity, while European countries take this American
role for granted and are even too frugal themselves to meet the “2% of GDP”
threshold, regarding defence expenditure.

To the objective eye, the situation with respect to the Pax
Americana was – although initially unavoidable – in fact quite absurd and very
unhealthy for both the United States and Europe.

It obviously failed to let
both continents evolve as equal partners with respect to the defence of their own
territory. The European naivety that the subsequent American governments would remain
sponsoring this Pax Americana “for eternity and beyond” was almost pathetic,
but the European countries enjoyed the party to the fullest, while it lasted.

While Western Europe thrived under the American army protection
and developed into the economic powerhouse that it became eventually, the
Americans themselves invested berzerk amounts of dollars in their defence system, as well
in the development of more modern and decisive weapons for any combat situation
and any military strategy. The American weapons arsenal therefore became
gargantuous and totally out of proportion, with annual defence spendings that
outranked all other countries in the world combined(!) in sheer numbers.

Europe slept like a baby under the American nuclear
umbrella, when the world was still divided in two camps. Nobody blamed Europe
for not being able to offer the same nuclear firepower as the USA, and for the
US itself the role as ‘defender of last resort’ on behalf of the Western World was
an obvious role, that they would not have had any other way.

However, when the Berlin wall fell and the “sole enemy for
all NATO-countries” Russia (i.e. initially
the Soviet Union and its vassal states) was replaced by a diffuse group of unbound,
supranational enemies (i.e. Al Qaida and later IS) from Islamic countries, the
situation became quite awkward for both the United States and a strategic
partnership like the NATO. The NATO was simply not formed and trained to execute asymetric
warfare and guerilla wars against non-formal, "stateless" enemies that didn't care about borders and civil casualties, like terrorist
groups and unofficial religious armies in the Arab world.

On top of that, the allied (NATO) forces became involved in a number of territorial wars in former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq and
elsewhere, that were lightyears removed from the NATO’s raison d’etre (i.e the arms race against the
Soviet Union and the defence of the Western Countries in peace- and wartime).

Especially
the war in Iraq seemed rather to enforce the personal, hidden agenda of George “Dubya”
Bush, than to diminish the influence of terrorism in the Middle-East.

And in the end the
NATO itself seemed more and more desperately looking for new member states, as well as
an enemy to fight with; an enemy that would prolong the reason for its sheer existance and new member states that would act as new disciples of the post-Cold War NATO doctrines. Hence:
the NATO’s flirtations in former Soviet states like Ukraine and Georgia and the
organization’s happy smile and Cold War rhetorics when Vladimir Putin fired up Russia’s
return to the top of the military food chain: “Hurrah, our old archenemy is back on track, so now we have a reason to further expand again and to do more military investments”.All in all, the unbalanced defence investments in Europe and the United States, as well as the unclear future strategy and raison d'etre for the NATO in combination with its aggressive expansion strategy in Eastern Europe, were an accident waiting to happen. And now, in November 2016, all European countries are genuinely panicking
when pondering about the implications of Donald Trump’s election to American
president; totally not knowing what to do: “What the heck! He would not
withdraw the American support to the NATO, wouldn’t he?! Ooh, that would be
terrible! That would be really terrible, now Vladimir Putin is after our European
scalps! And Trump even likes
that guy, can you believe it? Oh my God, oh my God , OH MY GOD!!! We are in
big, big trouble. Mother, help us!”

The odds that the cherished Pax Americana might sink into a
long and deep coma, are substantial, with Trump as executive commander in chief of the American military forces. And the question will be, whether it might
ever get out of it again. Perhaps the stupidoust thing is that Europe could have seen it
coming from a long, long distance. President Barrack Obama already told Europe on
a few occasions – in shrouded sentences – that the American support for the old
continent would not last forever, when the European defence investments would not
dramatically increase. However, the European countries chose to ignore that “message to
the deaf”, still hoping that the Democrat governments of Barrack Obama and (later)
Hillary Clinton would stand shoulder to shoulder with these frugal Europeans.

But now the worst thing happened: Donald Trump became president-elect. And Donald Trump is crystal clear about the American involvement in the NATO: they will form a good source for massive cutbacks and austerity. President Donald Trump defends the American
territory and the American interests alone. And Europe... should look after itself.

But look at it from the bright side: perhaps Donald Trump should and could act as the “Cold
Turkey” shock therapy that the inert European continent desperately needed, in
order to get its own act together. Maybe it’s a weird idea, but the election of president
Donald Trump could be a blessing in disguise after all for Europe.

The side-effects of this election paint in unambiguous
pictures how vulnerable and uneasy the European stance has been since the end
of the Cold War. And now – with Trump at the helm – Europe can’t simply rest on
its laurels anymore and must act to not step into the pitfall of economic, political
and military helplessness.

The worst that could happen now is that the European Union
falls apart as a consequence of societal acrimony in the member states and
inter-European quarrels between the same member states. The thought that 27
single member states are stronger and politically healthier than the European Union as a
whole, is preposterous and should be abolished as soon as possible. And when this very Union does not function good, there
should be more (hurried) initiatives to improve it and make it better and more
democratic in the long run. A better functioning and more democratic union would sweep the wind away from the sails
of the populist parties all over the European continent and the United Kingdom

The only thing that Europe can do, is act as a team to
combinedly undertake the challenges of a more and more polarized world, in
which not only Russia and China will be the obvious competitors (or enemies),
but even our long-time ally, the United States.

Wake up... and smell the coffee, Europe. Or you will miss the boat... And don’t listen to
the Pied Pipers that drag you in the wrong direction, where desperation and
conflicts lurk for many of us.

Sunday, 6 November 2016

President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines is an
exceptional politician and a man of his word. No “empty promises mean empty
hands” with this charismatic leader. He stands for his words and promises to
the Philippine population. That is truly an exceptional quality for
politicians, who are often accused of lying, making up stories and not keeping
their promises.

A painful fact is, unfortunately, that President Rodrigo
Duterte promised the Philippine population a relentless war on drugs and crime.
A war that would not be fought through the normal legal system of police
actions and subsequent jurisdiction via tough, but fair trials for defendants.
No, under the pressure of the drugs abuse- and crime-fatigued Philippine
population, Duterte promised the deployment of his version of martial law in
his country. The same martial law that he already maintained as a mayor of Davao City, turning this city from the "murder capital of the country" into a peaceful city, according to Dutch Wikipedia.

Suspected criminals and drug abusers would not be brought to
justice, but they would be executed at the spot, according to Duterte, and
their bodies would be provided with a sign that showed their crimes: as a
warning to the rest of the population.

And boy, did President Duterte keep his promise...

That is a conclusion, which we can holeheartedly draw with
this president, after roughly six months of Duterte government and probably a couple of thousand street executions
later. Mercy on behalf of criminals and drug abusers was definitely not a word
in President Duterte’s dictionary of late and pictures of executed and tagged
Philippine criminals have flooded the news desks of media all over the world.

And that was not all… Duterte offended the American
president Barrack Obama on a number of occasions by – amongst others – calling him a “son of a b*tch” at one
occasiononly days before
the American president would visit him, and – after administering a
half-hearted apology out of ‘damage control’ a few days later – offending him
again at another occasion a few weeks later.

On top of that, Duterte threatened to break down all the
economic ties with the United States and put the recent plans of the previous
Philippine government – to bring back the American army to their former Philippine
military bases as soon as possible – in the fridge for eternity.

And to make things even worse in American eyes, President
Duterte is also starting a cautious love affair with Russian president Vladimir
Putin, as he sees China, Russia and the Philippines as “a troika of friends in
a battle against the United States”.

A cautious conclusion of all this could be that both the
law, the legal situation for the Philippine citizens and the political
stability in the Philippines are not in the most careful hands with Rodrigo
Duterte as president. The fact that many Philippines consider him as a ‘blessing
in disguise’, tired as they were from drug related crime in their cities and
villages, does not change much about this unfortunately. As a matter of fact, Duterte is
something like “an accident waiting to happen” in his relations with the
Western world and regarding his own population.

This population might now adore him for his toughness on
crime, but they could start feeling like a sitting duck when the extra-legal
executions continue to happen and ‘guilt beyond reasonable doubt’ becomes
definitely an expression from the past in this island nation.

And who says that all the people, who are killed in the name
of the president, are really guilty?! Why should Duterte not abuse his nearly
unlimited power to kill his political and societal opponents?! And who cares
about one more body on an nearly endless stack?! A president ‘tough on crime’ is
nice, until he starts to hurt you and your loved ones...

President Rodrigo Duterte reminds us all that we invented
the legal systems and laws in our countries to prevent people from being shot or
killed out of political and legal arbitrariness. Judge Dredd – “I don’t break the law… I am the law” – is a nice character for
in a movie, but not as your president, isn’t he?!

Exactly this point is where the large Dutch bank ING Bank enters
the scenery...

In their endless hunt for better margins and more profit, ING is
thinking about outsourcing large parts of their ICT and data infrastructure to…
Manila, in the Philippines.

For a lot of economic and circumstancial reasons – probably the
central position of the Philippines between the Western and the Eastern
hemisphere and its ample availability of well-educated and relatively low-paid
workers, with in general excellent knowledge of English – this could be an
economically wise decision of ING bank and a decision that I could understand
fullheartedly.

Nevertheless, from a political point of view this decision is
close to a disaster, to these eyes.

ING Bank is not 'your everyday bank', but a large Dutch banking
conglomerate with tens of thousands of workers in offices all around the globe.
It belongs to the list of twenty so-called Global SIFI-banks (i.e. systemically
important financial institution) and has a very high profile in the international
business industry, as well as in the political world; almost like no other
Dutch company, besides Shell and Unilever, has.

When such a bank decides to outsource a large share of its operations
to a country where the most basic human rights of citizens (i.e. the right for
a fair trial and the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty) are
trampled by a gung ho-president, like Rodrigo Duterte, this is a strong signal
to the rest of the world that human rights don’t count in the end.

And where the executive management of ING seemed reluctant
to swallow this bitter political pill and immediately skip the “Manila plan”,
the joint industrial council of ING Bank in The Netherlands made a
crystalclear statement about thatin the Dutch newspaper Telegraaf:

The joint industrial
council (i.e. COR – Centrale OndernemingsRaad) of ING asked executive manager
Nick Jue of ING The Netherlands to ‘take the situation regarding the human rights on the
Philippines into consideration’ and to ‘reconsider the question whether it is
sensible or not to outsource more activities and labour to Manilla’. This
statement was written by the COR in a newsletter for the personnel, which is in
the possession of the Telegraaf.

At ING not everybody
feels comfortable with the outsourcing of services to a country where the president
states in public that ‘he doesn’t care about human rights’.

The last paragraph must be the understatement of the year. And
the red and bold
paragraph states in very concealed phrases: “Are you out of your mind to even consider this wild idea, at this time
with this president in charge?!”.

Of course I understand that ING Bank already invested
millions (if not hundreds of millions) of Euro’s in the planning, preparation
and execution of this Manilla operation. Millions that can be written off
immediately, when this plan shipwrecks. And I also understand that this plan
has probably started in a different time with different political leadership on
the Philippines.

Nevertheless, as long as Rodrigo Duterte is in charge as
president of the Philippines, this country is a no-go area for every serious corporation,
that states to respect and endorse human rights.

ING Bank cannot hide itself behind the excuse of ‘not
knowing the human rights situation in the Philippines’. Everybody and their
sister knows, as Rodrigo Duterte never made a secret of this policy.

And so it is, that things that you know and you can’t
ignore, can haunt you on your way to more efficiency and higher profits.

ING can and must do only one thing and that is pulling
the plug out of this Philippines’ outsourcing plan! Every other outcome will
cause the bank much political and societal damage... Scout’s honour!

There are two truisms in the world, when it comes to the
United States:

The president of
the United States is considered to be the most powerful man (or woman) in the
world;

The American people choose the American president through
their national elections.

While these two truisms have been the truth for almost a
century, these were seldomly so regretted by many people as in the year 2016.

While presidential candidates for the United States have
more often been controversial (for instance John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon,
Ronald Reagan or George ‘Dubya’ Bush to name a few), seldomly the world has
experienced the total shock & awe and sheer bewilderment that the current
presidential candidates and the accompanying smear campaign in the United
States have brought during the last 15 months.

For many Europeans, their main acquaintance with Donald Trump
was the American televised series The Apprentice, in
which Trump could choose a ‘successor’ for his business empire.

In this series
Trump was harsh, noisy and very direct (or rude) to his candidates – or should
they be called his slaves(?) – but it
was innocent television for people, who did not want to tire themselves with
interesting documentaries or thorough interviews about subjects that really
mattered; there was really nothing to worry about.

Now, however, there is a considerable chance that this man,
with seemingly the diplomatic skills of a hippopotamus and the political cunningness
of a slug, will be elected to become the most powerful man in the world. A man,
who already alienated Mexicans, Muslims, Democrats, African-Americans, Koreans,
Chinese, Hispanics and almost every other minority and interest group in the
United States and far, far beyond.

Trump is the hero of the poor and derailed, whiteformer blue
collar worker and 21st Century unemployed. He is extremely rich and extremely
ignorant, a pathological liar and firebrand and – on top of that –
somebody who does not pay his share in taxes himself, but leaves that for the
working class alone.

But nevertheless, Trump is someone who gained massive popularity by bluntly calling
the political elites in Washington for what they are: not good for the country
and for the American people, as they only pursue their own political and
economic interests and those of their rich and important sponsors.

And that is the reason that Trump – in spite of himself and
his often erratic behaviour – gets the confidence vote from a large share of
the impoverished and desperate, white American people, who saw their jobs and
their future disappear to the low wage countries around the world. People, who remained
in poverty during and after the crisis, without a dot on the horizon to
navigate to: Trump promises them to bring their industrial jobs back from the
low wage countries... a promise which he won’t be able to keep, I’m afraid.

As a matter of fact, Trump is the symbolic ‘grim reaper’ of
American politics: the definitive, living proof that the American democratic
system is ages past its ‘best before’-date. To put it bluntly: the American
political landscape is perhaps already in a comatose state, of which it might
not revive anymore...

This is due to an utterly divided country in every sense
of the word, years and years of bi-partisan warfare between the Democrats and
the GOP, which totally paralyzed the country, and the ubiquitous sell-out of
American politics to the highest, corporate bidder.

That would not be a huge problem for the rest of the world –
a rest that has its own domestic quarrels and economic problems to solve – when
this possible president Donald Trump would not have his finger on the trigger
of the thousands of nuclear warheads, that still remain in the possession of the
United States. This possible president Trump could be the spark to an emerging (cold/hot)
war between the USA and Russia or China, silently
fired up by the NATO, which has a secret agenda of
expansion-at-any-price in order to survive its own redundancy.

What makes Donald Trump very dangerous to these eyes, is not
that he is a bad person per sé: one could for instance call the Russian
president Vladimir Putin ‘a cold, unscrupulous and shrewd snake’ with a clear political
agenda and a whole encyclopedia full of intelligence tricks and this person is
totally right. Nevertheless, Vladimir Putin is intelligent and quite
predictable on the other hand and he knows when he goes too far to contain a
political situation. Putin won’t scr*w up too much, in order to prevent from an
all-out global war of Russia with the United States and the NATO.

However, Donald Trump is totally unexperienced and unpredictable
– I think he is not far removed from being a narcisistic lunatic – and he utterly
misses the political skills and diplomatic antennas to keep his foreign policy
on track and not alienate the whole world (f.i. China, the European Union and
Russia, as well as the Americas) against the United States.

And the worst part is: Donald Trump is only half of the
problem of these elections!

Hillary Clinton started the presidential campaign as a governmentally
seasoned and seemingly decent woman (!) with a ‘presidential bonus’ from her
husband and former president Bill Clinton, as well as years and years of useful
political experience. Now, at the end of her campaign, she has shown the world
that:

It was no problem
whatsoever for her to bring her campaign down to the same gloomy level of mud
throwing and below-the-belt clinching as Donald Trump did in his campaign;

She seems to be on the leash of big, corporate America (i.e.
“Wall
Street” & “Silicon Valley”), as well as some of the superwealthy
Americans, who want to do everything in the interest of their country, except
for paying their (moral) tax dues;

Consequently, her soothing words about fairness, compassion
and solidarity between the different ethnic and economic groups in the United
States sound increasingly hollow and implausible;

During her time as Secretary of State she had a dangerous
disdain for the most basic form of security and secretness, that inevitably
comes with her utterly important and responsible
job (i.e. “Emailgate”).

Taking all this into consideration, one must conclude that
Hillary Clinton’s political star faded quicker than the flash of a cheap flare.
What remains is the bitter feeling that Hillary Clinton is just as bad and
sickeningly vicious as Donald Trump.

And then it comes to the Million Dollar Question of these presidential
elections:

“Who do you trust more with
your expensive car (i.e. the country and the world – EL)? The lunatic driver, who is boasting on his abilities to
drink-and-drive and evade all the traffic rules?!Or the
clumsy, slightly mean old lady, who will probably forget your car keys in an overcrowded
bar, loaded with people of ill repute?!”

You probably know the answer to this question: ‘Does it really matter?!’

And that is exactly
the painful feeling that I have – as a Dutchman and a European – in the eve of
the presidential elections in the United States.

In The Netherlands – which arguably could be called the 51st
state of the United States in its uncritical, almost blind adoration of
everything American – the people have been haunted night after night by:

Dozens of
documentaries about both candidates Trump and Clinton, as well as about the
American elections and the USA in general;

Thorough reports of ALL the political events regarding the
elections in the two years before this event;

All the American political manure poured over every involved
political candidate;

And last, but not least: ALL the debates and battles, from the early preliminaries
until the candidates last aired political breath on the night before the
election.

To put it mildly, I really wonder whether the last elections
in Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom – our most important trade
partners by lightyears – combinedly(!) got one-tenth
of the media attention and airplay that the American elections get in The
Netherlands. And for what?!

“What does it matter who is elected in the White House, when both
candidates seem a crossbreed of Beavis, Butthead, Eric Cartman, Dopey the Dwarf
and Cruella de Ville. And how desperate must the Americans be, when they accept
that the presidential elections cost their country north of $3 billion and in
the end they become stuck with THESE two candidates from hell.”

When I pondered about the implications of these oncoming American
elections, I thought that it would be really nice and sensible when the most important
democratic politician in the world would be elected by the whole western world,
instead of the Americans alone.

Sounds like a stupid idea?! Yes, normally it would!

But now, I feel worried by the dubious level of both
presidential candidates in the United States.

I hope that they know and understand that they have an
obligation towards my wife, my children and my children’s children, as well as towards
the billions of other people and children in the rest of the world: the
obligation not to scr*w up bigtime.

This is something that I entrust Vladimir Putin with,
in spite of everything that I dislike about him. But will Hillary and Donald also
have this capability?! I am not too sure yet!

Photo

Totaal aantal pageviews

Gold price

About me

Hi, I am Ernst Labruyère. I live in The Netherlands with my wife Olga and my three children.
I blog on the Dutch, European and worldwide economies.
I try to bring you the interesting newsfacts and insights.
Besides doing photography and playing my electric guitar, I'd like to drive to my work with my racing bicycle. Saving the environment and getting rid of some pounds. I hope you enjoy this blog. Please let me know: @orbeaernie on twitter or ealabruyere@gmail.com